Thursday, October 10, 2013

A shot in the dark

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 9.)

Some of us (but only a minority, by the look of things) have
taken the time during the past couple of weeks to cast our votes in the local
government elections.

As a result of this three-yearly exercise in participatory democracy,
some cities and towns will have new mayors by this time next week. A much
larger number will have an intake of new councillors.

As always, the candidates include a significant proportion
of no-hopers, cranks, misfits, oddballs, mischief-makers, egotists and
single-issue obsessives.

Fortunately, local government also attracts conscientious,
capable people who genuinely want to serve their communities. The problem for
voters is that it’s often hard to tell the difference between the two types of
candidate.

The information we are given with the ballot papers, or in
advertising material, is a wholly inadequate basis on which to cast our votes.

It tells us what candidates value – or at least what they
say they value – and what they propose to do if elected. But it gives no
indication of how they will perform if they succeed in winning office. The
proof of the pudding, as the saying goes, is in the eating.

Mostly, candidates’ election promises consist of safe platitudes
that no one could disagree with: stuff like keeping rates down, ensuring
transparency and working hard to represent their constituents.

Usually the election bumph lists the councillors’
credentials, but these don’t tell us much either. Even a certifiable sociopath
might be truthful in saying he’s lived in the town for 20 years and is married
with four children – but it’s no guide to his competence as a councillor.

I recall years ago being impressed by the CV of a council candidate
in Wellington. He seemed to tick all the right boxes, but turned out to be a disaster:
erratic, argumentative, emotionally unstable and incapable of working with his
colleagues.

Attending candidates’ meetings is more informative than
reading election material. It provides an opportunity, albeit a limited one, to
assess candidates’ personalities.

I went to one such meeting a couple of weeks ago and, as a
result, changed my mind about a person I previously intended to vote for. A
sitting councillor, he struck me as casual and complacent. He didn’t bother to
confirm to the meeting organisers that he would turn up and he hadn’t prepared
any speech notes, instead speaking off the cuff in a rambling fashion.

He dropped from number one on my preference list to last
place. I reasoned that if he took such an offhand approach to a candidates’ meeting,
he would probably be similarly lackadaisical in his attitude to council
business.

The problem is, only a tiny handful of voters make the
effort to attend such meetings. Many of the few dozen people present at the
meeting I attended were senior citizens, and I suspect a lot of them knew enough
about local politics to have already made up their minds about who they would
vote for.

Now here’s another problem. Traditionally, people have
formed judgments about the performance of their mayor or councillors through
the local media. Media coverage was a never a perfect basis on which to cast an
informed vote (in fact it sometimes had the perverse effect of giving
prominence to stirrers at the expense of councillors who got things done), but
it was far better than nothing.

Alas, many local newspapers that once provided detailed
coverage of council meetings no longer have the resources to do so, or have
diverted those resources into supposedly sexier subjects.

This means people wanting to make their vote count must find
out more about the candidates for themselves, but the overwhelming majority
don’t consider local government important enough to make the effort. They end
up voting for people because they like the look of them, they recognise their
name or they have a sister-in-law who has her hair done at a candidate’s salon
and says she seems nice.

That is, if people bother voting at all. Most don’t.

A recent survey by Local Government New Zealand revealed
that 31 per cent of people didn’t bother voting because they didn’t know enough
about the candidates. Another 24 per cent intended to vote but forgot to, and
14 per cent were too busy. But only 14 per cent were genuinely not interested.

The low participation rate is hard to explain when you
consider the profound impact local government has on our daily lives: the
streets we drive on, the sewage plants that treat our waste, the hospitals we
go to when we have an accident, the water we drink, the disposal of the rubbish
we create, the sports grounds we play on, the libraries that issue our books
and the hygiene standards of the restaurants and takeaway bars we patronise.

LGNZ chief executive Malcolm Alexander put an interesting
spin on the elections last week when he pointed out that local government controls
$120 billion worth of assets and spends $8 billion annually. If you were a
shareholder in a company that size, he said, you’d surely want a say in who ran
it.

In many respects, local government has a more direct influence
on our quality of life than legislation passed by Parliament. Yet a general
election generates infinitely greater interest and excitement than the local
government polls.

And it goes without saying that Parliament attracts a
different type of candidate. National politics has an aura of glamour and power
– words not normally associated with local government. The money’s better, too.

Yet there’s never a shortage of candidates for local office.
For reasons that are not immediately apparent, it seems to appeal to a
particular personality type. And I suppose the rest of us should be grateful,
because someone has to do it.

All of which brings me back to those oddballs,
mischief-makers and egotists.

Inevitably, some of them will get elected. And once in
office, they can be hard to dislodge. They will attract publicity. Their names
will become known.

And three years down the track, when people vote again, they
may get re-elected simply because people recognise their names.

That’s one of the hazards of local government. We just have
to hope that the sensible, conscientious councillors will outnumber those who
are in it for self-aggrandisement or to pursue their own weird agendas.

2 comments:

Here in Eastbourne the election papers contained no candidates for community board because nobody put their hands up. The existing board has been rolled over.

Listening to a lengthy session on talkback about the low turn-out I concluded that for many people none participation is a protest vote. My own Dad is refusing to vote and that's very uncharacteristic. He doesn't like the incumbents but doesn't see any better replacements. I sent off my papers without a tick for Mayor, not even subscribing to the 'lesser of two evils'. There was one person I promised to vote for and had to honour that. And I managed to find a couple of others who mildly appealed.

I any case, like central govt politicians, the influence they can exert over bureaucracy is limited.

Our district council usually doesn't have a vote in this ward as the councillors usually seem to jack it up amongst themselves as to who will stand. This election however there are 5 candidates for 4 positions and they all wrote a section in the booklet that came out. None has any apparent policies-they just say where they live and that they are nice people(which I am sure is true...)and that's it. No meetings have been held anywhere that I can detect-I have searched the local papers but nothing. I threw the papers in the rubbish and so not voting is m=y protest vote. We pay rates but living in the country get no services at all. When i asked the mayor why we paid such high rates and got no services he said that for the rates we got democracy!

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.